Politics > Politics-USA > Hey, Georgie, opium trade and the Taliban are thriving in Afghanistan. Wha' hoppen?
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
03 Jan 2004 07:00:50 AM |
| Object: |
Hey, Georgie, opium trade and the Taliban are thriving in Afghanistan. Wha' hoppen? |
Nato countries have little enthusiasm for playing second fiddle to
American special forces in the provinces, and the US shows no sign
that it will break with its warlord allies.
Three predictions:
* No internationally recognised free elections will take place in
Afghanistan next year (but some sort of charade may be arranged).
* US forces will pull out within three years.
* The Taleban will be back in power within five.
From The New Zealand Herald, 1/4/03:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?reportID=61564&storyID=3541528
Sunday January 04, 2004
Opium is thriving and the Taleban are back in Afghanistan
By Gwynne Dyer
Two years after American troops arrived in Kabul, how is the Bush
Administration's project for a democratic and prosperous Afghanistan
coming along?
Well, the opium crop is booming - 3600 tonnes this year, almost back
to the peak production of 4600 tonnes reached before the Taleban
banned the crop in 1999.
But virtually none of the revenue finds its way to Hamid Karzai's
interim government in Kabul.
The provincial warlords who control almost everything outside the
capital keep it for themselves.
The rest of Afghanistan's cash income comes almost entirely from
foreign aid, but much of that is channelled through the same local
warlords, strengthening their grip on the population.
Small wonder that the new Afghan army, supposed to be 70,000 strong,
trained just 4000 troops last year, and that the proportion of girls
at school, never more than half, is dropping again because of
widespread intimidation in rural areas.
Karzai is a legitimate and respected political leader, but he is only
a Pashtun-speaking figurehead in an interim government whose dominant
figures are mostly drawn from the non-Pashtun minorities of the north.
That was inevitable at the start because the United States
subcontracted the job of overthrowing Taleban rule to the Tajik,
Uzbek, Hazara and Turkmen militias of the Northern Alliance.
But little has been done to adjust the balance since.
So the southern, Pashtun-speaking provinces that were once the
Taleban's heartland are falling back into the hands of the resurgent
fundamentalists.
Most of Zabul and Oruzgan provinces and half of the Kandahar region
are once again Taleban-controlled by night, and US troops and those of
the International Security Assistance Force have come under fire more
often in the past three months than in all of the previous 15.
More than two dozen American and ISAF troops have been killed this
year, a proportional loss rate worse than Iraq because of the far
smaller number of foreign troops in Afghanistan.
US officials claim to be inflicting vastly greater casualties on their
opponents - more than 400 Taleban fighters killed in September - but
the fact that most of these casualties are caused by American
airstrikes or by local militias leaves much room for doubt.
The militias have a habit of furthering their private interests by
labelling their opponents Taleban, and the airstrikes are often
inaccurate because the intelligence is so bad.
Two US attacks in southeastern Afghanistan killed 15 children in the
same week early this month.
After 15 aid workers were killed in Taleban attacks in recent months,
the United Nations has pulled its foreign workers back to Kabul.
Senior UN officials have publicly doubted whether the elections
scheduled for June will happen at all.
"There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a
failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and
narco-terrorists," warns Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime.
But why has it gone so badly wrong?
Simple arithmetic provides the answer.
Afghanistan's population is only slightly smaller than that of Iraq,
about 20 million versus 25 million.
The occupation force in Iraq has at least 150,000 American and allied
troops.
There are only one-tenth as many in Afghanistan - 10,000 US regular
and special forces soldiers spread round the country plus 5000 ISAF
troops who are largely confined to the capital.
Military experts reckon even the US-led force in Iraq is too small for
such a large and populous country.
So the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan is hopelessly
inadequate for the job.
Why is it so small?
Because US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was determined to keep
most US troops free for the attack on Iraq.
This meant that his only option for controlling rural Afghanistan was
to make alliances with local warlords and rule through them.
Until recently, these alliances did stop a Taleban comeback, but that
containment policy is now failing in Pashtun areas, meaning that the
project for a democratic Afghanistan was doomed from the start.
It was probably never taken seriously at the Pentagon, which has
always backed its warlord allies against Karzai's attempts to assert
the authority of the centre.
When Karzai tried to fire four or five "governors" who were running
their provinces as personal fiefdoms last May, US officials over-ruled
him.
Until recently, the US also blocked any expansion of the ISAF's role
beyond Kabul, because international peacekeeping troops would not
tolerate the American-warlord alliances in rural Afghanistan.
Now the roof is slowly falling in, and US policy is starting to
change.
More aid money and rebuilding teams are being sent to Afghanistan and
the ISAF is at last being asked to deploy outside of Kabul.
But Nato countries have little enthusiasm for playing second fiddle to
American special forces in the provinces, and the US shows no sign
that it will break with its warlord allies.
Three predictions:
* No internationally recognised free elections will take place in
Afghanistan next year (but some sort of charade may be arranged).
* US forces will pull out within three years.
* The Taleban will be back in power within five.
_________________________________________________
And still no Osama. Tsk, tsk.
Harry
"Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We
strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with
all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a
damning emphasis does it then blot us out!"
William James
.
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